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Former NASA CTO steps aside at his OpenStack-focused startup

Chris Kemp will bring in a new CEO at his company, Nebula.

As government exits go, Chris Kemp's 2011 decision to leave NASA and launch a company to build OpenStack cloud services was particularly ambitious. But the former CTO's firm, Nebula, is two years old and growing, and on Sept. 13 Kemp announced that he is stepping aside as CEO to bring in industry veteran Gordon Stitt.

Kemp, a 2010 Federal 100 winner, is now Nebula's chief strategy officer. He remains on the board and will continue as a member of the executive team, according to the company's announcement.

OpenStack is an open-source cloud computing platform for public and private clouds that has its roots in NASA's Nebula Cloud Computing Platform. NASA joined forces with Rackspace, which has developed a similar project, to create OpenStack in 2010.